Fitler Square

Fitler Square is a .5-acre public park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the southwestern part of the central city. It was named for Mayor Edwin Henry Fitler, who died in 1896, just before the park opened. The surrounding area between 21st Street to the east, the Schuylkill River on the west, Locust Street on the north, and Bainbridge Street to the south was known to be a blighted neighborhood which was described as a mudhole inhabited by drunks and empty bottles until the 1950s. Local people worked with the government to free up mortgage money and build new homes and rehabilitate the neighborhood, preventing the construction of the Crosstown Expressway through the neighborhood and saving it from blight.